Never saw this coming: Blondie, circa 2014, covering Frankie
Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax”; the first half of this six-minute version is set
to a morbid pace and features just piano, Debbie Harry and backing singers.
After that, it really gets weird: a guitar and synth interlude then gives way
to what sounds like the original backing track with an EDM makeover. By the
time Harry starts pleading with us to hit her with laser beams, I’d be shocked
if anyone is still listening.

Between that and the head-scratching album title, Blondie are
choosing to celebrate their 40th anniversary as a band in strange
style. On this, their fourth album since their 1999 comeback, they seem a tad,
well, desparate: this is a double album, the second half of which features the
band rerecording all of their greatest hits, without any major reinvention or
imagination—so why bother?

The good news is that Blondie’s new originals sound exactly as
you might hope they would: much like their 1999 hit “Maria,” this material will
fit in seamlessly beside their greatest hits in a live set, even if it errs on
the fluffier side, and these recorded versions have occasionally unfortunate
nods to Max Martin-style modern pop production. Harry is in fine voice, while the
subtle cumbia touches (including accordion) are no more out of place than the
reggae that would have coloured earlier material. But between the rerecorded
bonus disc, the too-long running length and the seeming inability to trust
their best instincts on everything but the actual songwriting, Blondie seems to
chasing ghosts rather than forging a future. (June 5)

Download: “Rave,” “Euphoria,” “Backroom”

Nels Cline Singers – Macroscope (Mack Avenue)

Pronto – The Cheetah (Butterscotch)

Rumour has it Wilco is reconvening in September. Its members
have hardly been idle. Drummer Glenn Kotche put out his second album of solo
percussion; Jeff Tweedy produced Low and Mavis Staples; bassist John Stirratt
and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone put out a new Autumn Defense album. Now
keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen follows up his 2013 colllaboration with Greg
O’Keeffe with a reissue of The Cheetah, an album he recorded at Wilco’s Chicago
loft, with O’Keeffe and members of the Chicago Underground Trio, around the
time he joined the band in 2001. And Wilco’s lead guitarist, Nels Cline, has
put out his third album of 2014 (the only one leading his eponymous
instrumental trio, however).

Cline had a prolific career before he joined Wilco; listen to
any of his lyrical guitar solos in that band and it’s clear he’s much more than
just another sideman. Cline plays guitar solos for people who don’t like
guitar; indeed, often it doesn’t even sound like he’s playing guitar. He’s one
of the only modern guitarists who can accurately be called Hendrixian: not just
for technique or style or capacity for innovation, but for soul—you can feel
every note Cline plays. Here he’s joined by longtime drummer Scott Amendola,
new bassist Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle), his wife Yuka Honda (Cibo Matto), harpist
Zeena Parkins and percussionist Cyro Baptista—all but Amendola are frequently
collaborators with John Zorn, the king of the improv scene in Cline’s newly
adopted hometown of NYC. Together, they move through somewhat traditional
jazz-rock fusion to beatless noise soundscapes and everything in between
(sometimes, like on “Hairy Mother,” all in the same song). Playing in a
somewhat conventional rock band as a day job has hardly dulled Cline’s
creatively restless spirit.

Much like in Wilco itself, Jorgensen takes a back seat to Cline when
comparing these two albums. Cline belongs up front; Jorgensen works best in the
background. Pronto dips into jazzy textures not unlike a lot of
Tortoise-related projects in Chicago in the late ’90s, but Jorgensen’s real
love is synth soundtrack work: he admits that the ’80s film and television work
of Stewart Copeland and Jan Hammer were big influences when he was growing up.
What sets Pronto apart is his tendency to drop a banjo in the middle of a
glitch electronic track—something that no doubt appealed to Jeff Tweedy when he
was casting about for new bandmates in 2001.

“Punk is dad.” This phrase—a play on the early ’80s rallying cry
of The Expoited, “punk’s not dead”—has become a popular meme lately, and it
certainly applies to Toronto band Fucked Up. Yes, some of them are dads. And
even though their very name distances themselves from the mainstream, they’ve
won major prizes, receive government arts funding, opened for Arcade Fire and
have shown themselves to be essential cultural catalysts in their hometown and
beyond. The anti-melodic growlings of singer Damian Abraham may still be
repellant to many, but Fucked Up is downright respectable. As they should be:
they do great work—outside the studio.

Glass Boys is an unusually concise record for this ambitious
band: 43 minutes. It suits them well. And yet, they still manage to outstay
their welcome. For such an explosive live act, the layers of guitars lack any
attack. As always, Abraham writes some fine lyrics—and then does everything he
can to make sure we can’t hear them. The band sounds like they’re running on
autopilot; there are none of the temporary flashes of brilliance scattered
throughout the 2011 rock opera David Comes to Life or 2008’s genre-busting
Chemistry of Common Life—both flawed records, but both at least more musically
interesting than this one. This is a band usually overflowing with ideas, for
better or worse. Here, the only good ideas are the psychedelic Tom Petty-ish
guitar solo on “Warm Change,” and hiring Gord Downie to sing a chorus about
“the privilege of mass delusion.” J Mascis is on here somewhere; you’d never
know it without glancing at liner notes.

So much cultural capital, so little to spend it on. That’s Fucked
Up. (June 5)

Download: “The Art of Patrons,” “Paper the House,” “Sun Glass”

Coldplay – Ghost Stories (Warner)

Celebrity rags will be parsing the lyrics here to find out if
this is Chris Martin’s divorce album. Who cares? Ever since the musical crime
that was their breakthrough single, “Yellow,” nobody has ever listened to Coldplay for the lyrics, and they won’t
now, either: “All I know is that I love you so / so much it hurts”; “In a sky
full of stars, I think I saw you.”

No, the real news about Ghost Stories, their third album with
producer Brian Eno, is that Coldplay sound like they’ve stepped out of the rat
race, no longer shamelessly trying to be The Biggest Band in the World. Ghost
Stories is a lovely, quiet, intimate album capable of converting crossed-arm
skeptics (right here)—if they stay awake, that is. Ghost Stories doesn’t even feature
anything resembling a fist-pumping stadium anthem or power ballad until the
second-last song, "A Sky Full of Stars"; otherwise, it’s all about Eno’s
trademark ambience, Martin’s falsetto and mostly electronic grooves not far
removed from U2’s Zooropa—though I’m not sure that’s a comparison their record
company wants to hear. (May 22)

Download: “Midnight,” “Another’s Arms,” “Magic”

Royksopp & Robyn – Do It Again (Arts and Crafts)

It’s been four years since Robyn’s breakthrough album, Body
Talk, the rare electro bubble-gum pop record that never seems to get old: more
than any of her other talents, it’s Robyn’s songwriting that sets her apart
from all her peers. Too bad that’s not obviously evident here, a five-track
collaboration with fellow Scandinavians Royksopp. The album’s centrepiece, the
nine-minute “Inside the Idle Hour Club,” doesn’t even feature her vocals; the
strongest song, the sultry, 10-minute “Monument,” complete with breathy sax
solo, is far removed from anything she’s done before. But more power to her:
the point of any collaboration is to exit your comfort zone. If the rest of
this EP sounded like that, instead of a less interesting take on her usual
sound, this might have worked. (May 29)

Download: “Monument,” “Every Little Thing,” “Do It Again”

The Roots – And Then You Shoot Your Cousin (Universal)

Can you imagine if Doc Severinsen made Bitches Brew? If Branford
Marsalis made Voodoo? Now that the Roots moved on up with Jimmy Fallon to The
Tonight Show, they’re more mainstream than ever, and are in a position to cash
in big time—and yet they don’t. This is a band that always craved acceptance,
to the point where they once installed stripper poles and hired dancers to
“inspire” them during the making of 2004’s The Tipping Point, in hopes of
conjuring a more commercial sound. So what now? Guest spots from Justin
Timberlake, Jay Z and Katy Perry? Maybe even Elvis Costello, with whom they
were last heard together on the full-length 2013 collaboration Wise Up Ghost?

Hardly. As we’ve known since 2009’s How I Got Over, their job as
Fallon’s musical foils has freed them up to be as weird as they want to be on
their own time. That means lots of minor-key piano, trippy beats and Biblical
gloom and doom from MC Black Thought. The guest list is decidedly either
close to home (long-time extended crew members Dice Raw and Greg Porn) or
avant-garde. Jazz pianist D.D. Jackson unleashes torrents of dissonant clusters
over a furious string section on "The Coming," while singer Mercedes Martinez
coos soothingly in the background. It’s not John Legend singing on "Tomorrow," even though it sure sounds like it; it’s the considerably lesser-known Raheem
DeVaughn. For all its left turns, however, And Then You Shoot Your Cousin is
remarkably concise—clocking in at an old-school length of 43 minutes and small
change.

The Roots have always been outliers: as a full live band in a DJ
culture; as music historians in a rapidly changing hip-hop world; as egoless
musicians able to collaborate with anyone and everyone. Now that Black Thought and
Questlove—the only two remaining original members—celebrate 20 years together,
they continue to push their artform and solidify a reputation as perhaps the
only hip-hop artists in history who continue to improve with age. Actually,
never mind hip-hop: how many artists of any genre make one of their best
records 11 albums into their discography? (May 29)